Philip Larkin is a poet known for his vulnerability in the midst of an era defined largely by toxic masculinity. He is an English poet from the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing naturally and effortlessly from his own life experiences, he chooses to view quotidian life as representative of the larger human narrative of experience. The predominant question of his poems is what makes us human?
As is unavoidable in poetry, Larkin writes in depth about death. He is plagued by the finality and severity of the phenomenon. "The Mower" is a short but powerful text which elaborates upon the suddenness of losing somebody, even if one isn't attached to this life. After the narrator mows over a hedgehog, he realizes how arbitrary his own life is and the lives of the people he loves are. He vows to remember the morning after the poor hedgehog died and to carry that feeling into his interactions with people moving forward. His conclusion is simple: be kind because people don't last forever.
In a similar way "Dockery and Son" dwells upon impermanence. Larkin writes often about indirect regret in his poems. "Dockery and Son" is about a narrator who learns of his old classmate's death by the man's son, whom he didn't know existed. Meeting the son, the narrator is astonished to simultaneously mourn his friend and seem to meet him again, reincarnated. This causes a great deal of anxiety for the narrator about his own decided lack of progeny and family. Again in "Wild Oats" Larkin explores the kinship between death and regret as he muses upon his younger years when he risked young love and lost due to his own ignorance and immaturity.
